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There is really no summer at all. From John Cheever’s Journals

What year, what summer it is, it does not matter. John Cheever is struggling to write, tired, preoccupied with money and lust. A journal entry:

Yesterday. A hot, midsummer day, past haying weather. Hot. In the back rooms the smell of burning paper from the heat. Then how subtly the air becomes fresh at dark and how a perfectly round, pale moon comes out of the woods. There is the excitement of autumn in the cool damp air and the light of the moon, coming back across the field through the orchard, the rich smell of windfalls, the beautiful flavor of an apple – and the next day will be still, hot, the next moonlight night will seem like fall; this variety, this continuous and stimulating play on your senses and your memory. How subtly the autumn arrives on the northwest wind and the full moon. There is really no summer at all; the summer is an illusion. The flowers are formed on the goldenrod by the Fourth of July, the green of the maples has begun to fade. The calendar of flowers, gin bottles, steak bones.